EAST BRUNSWICK — There were more employees than shoppers in the East Brunswick Kmart on U.S. Route 18 South when it opened at 6 a.m. this morning.

But getting a spot at the front of the line still took patience and grit.

Leslie Wondoloski of Milltown, first in line, arrived at the store at 10 p.m. last night and slept in her car with her two daughters.

"We've been doing this since she was little, about 7 or 8 years old," she said, pointing to her oldest daughter a few minutes before the store opened. "We do this every year, then we go home in the morning, cook dinner and then we'll go back out shopping tomorrow."

Despite a significantly shorter holiday shopping season, with only 27 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the National Retail Federation has predicted that November and December sales will increase 3.9 percent over last year, totaling $602.1 billion.

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When the Washington-based retail trade association released its forecast, the sting of the federal government shutdown and its effects on consumers were still fresh.

“Our forecast is a realistic look at where we are right now in this economy — balancing continued uncertainty in Washington and an economy that has been teetering on incremental growth for years,” Matthew Shay, NRF president and CEO, said in early October. “Overall, retailers are optimistic for the 2013 holiday season, hoping political debates over government spending and the debt ceiling do not erase any economic progress we’ve already made.”

If political turmoil had any effect on Wondoloski, it didn't show. She was eager to pick up Disney Infinity figurines, a 32" LED television and an Android tablet. She visited the same store last year and said the line to get in was at least 100 people deep by 7 p.m. on the eve of Thanksgiving 2012.

She thinks fewer people committed to lining up at the door because more retailers have stretched their hours into Thanksgiving and given deal-conscious shoppers more options.

An assistant manager came outside at 5:45 a.m. to hand out colored sheets of paper to the sixteen people waiting. Each sheet would act as vouchers for a group of items considered "doorbusters," or high in demand and likely to cause a little competition among the diehard shoppers. There were sheets for video games, electronics, toys and clothing.

With a sheet of paper in hand that would allow her to claim her LED television, Wondoloski was free to peruse the aisles and leave the bulky item for last. That gave her and her daughters ample time to defrost before heading back into the cold. By 6 a.m. the temperature outside the store had only reached 33 degrees.

Lucky for Wondoloski and her daughters, Stephanie Vasquez of Sayreville was kind enough to pick up coffee for her fellow early bird shoppers.

"I've got boys and they want games, so all I'm getting is games this year," she said. "Walmart has the Playstation 4, so I'm going to try to get one of those tonight."

After Kmart she planned on stopping at a Walgreens, which stays open around the clock through the holiday weekend, then going home to enjoy Thanksgiving. Tonight she'll visit Walmart and then Toys 'R' Us to score more deals on video games for her sons.

If not for having to go into work at a lawyer's office in Perth Amboy tomorrow, Vasquez said she could probably get her shopping done even sooner.

Store manager Andre Ramlogan, who's worked in Kmart stores all over New Jersey for the past 17 years, has seen the company open its stores on Thanksgiving for years. It's only just now that other big box stores and malls have decided to extend their hours into Thanksgiving.

"There's a lot more competition for being open on Thanksgiving now," he said. "It's definitely a challenge for scheduling and availability being open from now until midnight tomorrow."

Ramlogan, of Hillsborough, said he'll spend his morning attending to customers and making sure they can find items in the store.

"People want to go home and cook," he said. "So we escort them to the items they're looking for and try to be as helpful as possible."

Editors Note: An earlier version of this post identified Leslie Wondoloski as a Sayreville resident. She lives in Milltown.